OFK: The Queen of Air and Darkness

Plot Synopsis

• So Arthur is a king now. He learns of his father's arbitrary deeds to Igraine the wife of the Earl of Cornwall and so the grudge between the two groups (Gaels and Galls) lives forever.
• The Earl and Igraine had three daughters: Morgan le Fay, Elaine and Morgause. Arthur's father Uther Pendragon fell in love with Igraine. He sent for her to be his wife, but she was faithfull to her husband and they ran away to the castles Tintagil and Terrabil. Uther Pendragon found them and proceeded to kill the Earl and take Igraine prisoner.
• The night that Uther took Igraine prisoner they "made" Arthur. Becuase Igraine was not out of mourning for the Earl, Uther could not naturally marry her and therefore Arthur came too soon. This is the reason for Arthur being sent away to Sir Ector as a child.
• Now Queen Morgause was Igraine's child from the Earl, therefore her and Arthur were half brother and sister.
• Queen Morgause had four children with the Earl, Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth. Morgause paid them no attention so one day the boys go hunt and kill a unicorn in hopes of pleasing their mother and gaining her attention. This makes Morgause irate, but finally one day she wakes up and realizes that she loves her boys very much and she wants to pay them all the attention in the world.
• In the end Morgause uses her spancel to make Arthur fall in love with her. (Keep in mind that they are half brother and sister.) They conceive a child, Mordred.
• Before the Arthur/Morgause/Mordred incident, Morgause was married to Lot. King Arthur was preparing for battle with Lot. Merlyn was still around but he was trying to get Arthur to think and act like a king. Arthur didn't like the fact that Merlyn would not always be around and that he would have to think on his own. King Arthur won the battle and returns home for the wedding of his dear friend King Pellinore.
• This brings us to King Pellinore's troubles with love. He fell in love with the Queen of Flander's daughter. He had to leave her to go on an adventure because no knight refuses an adventure. This made him miserable becuase he could not find the love of his life.
• Sir Grummore and Sir Palomides deside to dress up as the "questing beast" (That King Pellinore has been searching for his whole life) to get King Pellinore's mind off of the Queen's daughter. After a heck of a time with the costume and then getting King Pellinore to agree to go hunt for her they all end up out of the mountain side in the pouring rain.
• While King Pellinore is waiting for the questing beast Grummore and Palomides find her and she falls in love with them (the dressed up beast). She gets them stuck between a rock and a hard place (literally!) and King Pellinore comes to the rescuse wondering what in the world is going on. Declining Grummore and Palomide's request to kill the questing beast King Pellinore sets her free, even though he has been questing her all his life with the intentions to kill her.
• King Pellinore agrees to hold back the questing beast while Grummore and Palomides escape. Meanwhile in the mountains the Queen of Flander's daughter is looking for King Pellinore. She finds him and they have an amazing wedding at Carlion.

Reactions/Reflection

• To be honest, I was out in left field with this one until I read one of my friends summaries. It was that initial story that Queen Morgause's kids were telling that threw me for a loop. Once I had read the whole thing and put the different parts together, it was like duh!
• The velvet robe that Arthur was wearing of his fathers was interesting. "Trimmed with the beards of fourteen kings who had been vanquished in the olden days...The moustaches were stuck on round the buttons". I guess that would be something like todays showing off. Wearing something to show just how great you are. It still seems kind of sketchy to me.
• Throughout The Once and Future King I have enjoyed Merlyn's character. He spoke a quote to Arthur that really caught my attention and made me laugh! "The destiny of Man is to unite, not to devide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of seperate trees". I had to stop and laugh for a minute but then I thought this is really true and it totally applies to life today. There is division everywhere: school, race, religion ect. I have yet to find an incident where good has come from it.
• Here I go with another quote from Merlyn that applies to todays world. This time about war. "There is no excuse for war, non whatever, and watever wrong which your nation might be doing to mine---short of war---my nation would be in the wrong if it started a war so as to redress it. A murderer, for instance, is not allowed to plead that his victim was rich and opressing him--so why should a nation be allowed to? Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force". I look at Merlyn as more of a narratore. He always is explaining something out to Arthur in a "apples and oranges" manner.
• I noticed that Grummore, Palomides and King Pellinore's adventures seem to always be about love. Grummore and Palomides dressed up as the questing beast in love of their friend King Pellinore's troubled heart and King Pellinore went hunting for the questing beast because his friends Grummore and Palomides insisted that he go; knowing and trusting that they must have a ryme to their reason.
• I really enjoyed the story of why Arthur was sent away to Sir Ector at birth. While reading The Sword in the Stone I never gave a second thought to why he was sent away. Reading about Arthur and his family I am constantly caught off guard with all of these weird and interesting occurances like this one.
• My family and I are hunters so I'm not necesarily a wild animal lover, but we have pets and I love them to pieces. While reading about Morgause's boys on the unicorn hunt I was shoked when I read about Agravaine running out and stabbing the unicorn to death. The way T.H. White described the beauty of the unicorn sucks you in and you feel like awww...and then BAMB! it's dead! Agravaine sort of ruined the moment.
• There were a couple of things that I still couldn't figure out. What was the deal with the Galls and the Gaels? I could not figure out who was on whose side. The other thing was, why was Queen Morgause called "the queen of air and darkness"? She was only refered to that once on the last page and it didn't seem clear to me why.

Vocabulary

Interesting Words

• Nigromancer
• Piseog
• Machicolation - an opening between the corbels of a projecting parapet or in the floor of a gallery or roof of a portal for discharging missiles upon assailants below.
• Uffizzi
• Mafeking Night - May 18, 1900. "Maffick": verb, to celebrate boisterously. During the Boer War.
• Dexterous - skillful and competent with the hands.
• Gallowglass - an armed Irish foot soldier.

Words I Did Not Understand Or Know

• Wroth - intensely angry.
• Halidome - something held sacred.
• Pacifist - strongly and actively opposed to conflict and especially war.
• Nunc Dimittis - the prayer of Simeon in Luke 2:29–32.
• Shillelagh - town in Ireland.
• Gralloch - to remove the offal from an animal.
• Usquebaugh - whiskey.
• Habergeon - a medieval jacket of mail shorter than a hauberk.